Royal Society of New Zealand Hudson Lecture

When: Wednesday 23rd August 6:00pmWhere: Te Whare Aparangi, Royal Society of New Zealand

The Hawking evaporation of black holes – Matt Visser

In 1973 Stephen Hawking proved that black holes slowly evaporate due to subtle quantum effects, leading to 44 years of confusion in the particle physics and general relativity communities. While there is little doubt that Hawking’s prediction is correct, and we even have some indirect experimental evidence, the devil is in the details — Matt will give a general non-specialist talk touching on black hole entropy, quantum information theory, and the foundations of both general relativity and quantum physics.